


No Salvation

by CFukurou (Chibifukurou)



Category: Terminator
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibifukurou/pseuds/CFukurou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm not a savior, I'm a survivor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Salvation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indiefic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiefic/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own anything. This story was written for personal enjoyment and entertainment purposes.

1993 (9 years old)

When other kids hear about time travel, killer robots, and noble deaths they laugh and giggle and think about how things would be “so cool” if the world was like one of those stories. That’s never been the case for me. As long as I can remember, I’ve always known that killer Robots would come and the fact that my father died a noble death didn’t make him any less dead.

Mom never likes to talk about my Dad, but once a year on the date of his death she gets quite and stops fighting against enemies that haven’t been created yet. On those days she’ll tell me about him, in a quiet voice that makes it seem like she’s imparting some great secret.

Even though I want to know everything I can about my father, a man who defied time to save my life, I’m not used to being the strong one. I’m used to my mother standing tall and proud, saying “screw the world I’m going to live and my son is going to live.” Seeing her she is like this seems like a betrayal on the most fundamental of levels.

Still how can I pick between learning about my father and staying true to my mother?

 

1995 (11 years old)

I met a Terminator today. He was everything my mother had told me about, everything I was always taught to fear, but I didn’t fear him. He was hard, unmoved by humanity or humanity’s plight but he was still a good terminator. He saved my mom even though he didn’t think he should and fought the T-1000 even though he knew he didn’t really have a chance of winning. He was willing to sacrifice himself for me and to stop the creation of SkyNet. I try to tell myself that he was only following orders, as my mom claims, but I don’t think either of us really believes it.

I always knew that terminators would come for me. Mom had taught me that for as long as I can remember, but now that it’s happened I finally get why Mom is afraid of them when she’s not afraid of anything else. They are vengeful and murderous machines, and yet they are human enough to confuse even those who know what they are. How can you kill something thoughtlessly when they make you second-guess every move you make?

That question shouldn’t matter to me now that Judgment day has been stopped but I can’t stop thinking about it, maybe that’s because I don’t actually believe that we stopped Skynet from being created. I don’t think Mom does either because even though there isn’t supposed to be a threat anymore she keeps fighting. She tries to act like she’s only doing it in case the Government comes for her, but you don’t need the firepower she’s accumulating to take on the government.

 

1997 (13 years old)

It’s Judgment Day, the day that the world was supposed to end and nothing has happened. LA still stands tall and the government hasn’t made any announcements about a new computer system, not even to themselves if mom’s contacts are to be believed.

It’s good, and something to be thankful for, but I almost wish it would have happened. Then the waiting could stop. Before we always knew when something was going to happen. August 29, 1997 was a date seared into our minds from the first time Mom heard it and the first time she told it to me.

I worry about Mom know that this date means nothing. Despite her attempts to hide it from me she’s been going to the reservation’s Doctor a lot lately. It’s concerning but not as concerning as the fact that she’s been fighting less than she ever has. She’s taking breaks to be with me every day. She tries to play it off as a side effect of no longer having to worry about Skynet but I don’t believe her. Something is wrong and I want to know what.

 

1999 ( 15 years old)

Two years ago mom abruptly decided that we had to “die”. I’d been surprised but figured that she’d finally decided that we should move on with our lives now that Judgment day hadn’t come. I should have known better. Mom always did things for a reason, but not the ones people expected.

Two months after our “death” we’d gotten a normal home and were living the lives of normal people. I was back in high school, living the high life of an average person and mom was working as a waitress, much as I complained I liked that life. It was the first time I could remember not looking over my shoulder at every turn. I should have known it was too good to last.

One day after school I came home to find her passed out on the kitchen floor. A call to 911 and a hospital visit later and I knew exactly why we were playing at being normal folk. Mom had stage 4 leukemia. She was dying and she was trying to protect me from that fact like she always did. The doctors gave her three to six months to live. She lived two years, she always was a fighter.

Now I’ve “died” once again and hit the open road. Mom’s last words to me were “Judgment Day is Coming” and who am I to argue with her, even when she’s dead and buried.

 

2004 (20 years old)

I spent 9 years trying to pretend that this day wasn’t coming and now that Judgment Day is here I wish I had spent every day of those 9 years preparing for this eventuality. Despite all my mother taught me I’m not a leader, at least I’m not in any way that matters. I might be the destined savior of humanity but in this day and age I’m useless, just a scared boy hiding out with the girl he’s going to marry and listening to the world die. The terminator that I met all those years ago had returned to save me once again and all I’d been able to do was watch him die. What kind of savior is that.

Kate is giving me a tenuous smile, no doubt assuming that I’ve got a plan. How am I going to tell her that there is no plan, no salvation? All we can do now is survive. With that thought in mind I step up to the radio to address all the poor souls who are crying out their pain and sorrow. I might not be a savior but I am a survivor.


End file.
